Belgian strike ace Romelu Lukaku appears to have been persuaded to stay

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Defender Ashley Williams has been recruited from Swansea for close to £12m

Being the hotbed of talent that Merseyside is, the Toffees seem keen to make the most of it and have tasked Vint with ensuring that there are more players like Ross Barkley coming off their production line.

Vint explained to the Telegraph: "It was the biggest professional decision I have ever made.

“(Chief exec) Robert Elstone told me he wants Everton to be the world’s best Academy. We already have a viable pathway, with 42 youngsters who’ve made their first team debut.

“We wanted to look at performance through a different lens and see what the world had to offer with the development of elite performers.

“I think it comes from some uncertainty and curiosity and perhaps even some discomfort people have about having someone who comes from such a different background being put in this position.

"Who is this guy? What does this mean? Is he going to ‘Moneyball’ us? I’ve heard this used as a verb. I chuckle at that because it’s not something I have ever said.

“I’m a fan of the game but I recognise that I know only a fraction of what the guys down this hallway know. They’ve lived it. They’ve played at the highest levels.

Reuters

Barkley dedicated his goal against Yeovil to former scout Sid Benson who has sadly passed away

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Toffees boss Ronald Koeman has been back in the transfer market this summer

"They’ve earned their scars and their coaching badges and they know the intricacies of what happens at a level I never will. My challenge is taking what they know and combining it with what I know to get disproportionate gains.

“I have to avoid the perception that I’ve come here from Olympic sports - with a PhD - and know a lot more than they do. That isn’t the case at all. We have simply come to this place from different paths. Our work has to be collaborative, not competitive."

“The important parallel with the Olympics and here is to be as clear as you can be with the footballers, as you are with elite level athletes, about where they need to be at given points. When they have that information they are more responsive.

“Often there is an assumption that because the coaches know the standard required to play first team football, their athletes must know it too. This is not an assumption we need to make. We are going to work to bring clarity to our players about everything that is required to reach the highest levels of the game.

Hart ache

Strike force

“We used a method originally developed to assess skill among international chess players.

“The 'Elo' method took into account both how you did in the tournament, but also who you competed against. All things considered, it did terrifically well at identifying the most internationally competitive athletes and teams.

“Some sports were relatively easy to understand from a performance standpoint. We could describe pretty clearly how far you needed to throw the shot put to compete for a gold medal, for example. We documented the historic progressions of each athlete in each event in each of the Summer and Winter Olympic sports.

"We could show what was needed to win and we could track an athlete’s or team’s progression against that. It became clear which athletes were most likely to compete for Olympic medals.

“For the first time ever in the USA it gave us a clear picture of who was competitive enough to win a medal. We were able to answer two important questions: ‘were we competitive enough to win a medal?’ and ‘were we getting any better?’

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Vint says it was easy to predict the fortunes of the likes of Michael Phelps

"We later extended this to the point where we could associate a given performance level with the statistical likelihood of winning a medal.

“With the likes of Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky it was easy. Their performance trajectories made it clear that they had progressed to deliver world-leading marks.

“Where it gets tough is when high performing athletes suddenly take a right turn and their trajectories plateau.

"It was in discussions with coaches and athletes who may have believed they are performing well when, in reality, they’re not doing so well relative to the ‘medal band’, where we brought real change.

"We were tracking every single athlete in each of the 300 plus Summer Olympic disciplines and nearly 100 Winter Olympic disciplines."

Everton will hope his attention to detail brings them similar success.